The NZ Initiative has published an essay arguing the case for economic growth. Now you might think there is no need for a case to be made for it – surely everyone favours it. Well in the forward it is pointed out:

In self-proclaimed intellectual circles, it has long been fashionable to belittle the idea of economic growth. “GDP is not the same as happiness”, some critics of growth will explain. Others will warn that excessive growth could destroy the environment and leave our planet uninhabitable. Others still will warn that the finite nature of our resources does not allow continuous growth in any case.

In fact the Green Party used to explicitly campaign against economic growth. Now, they only do it implicitly.

Hartwich points out:

Economic growth is the driver behind all of these developments because at its core, economic growth is not mainly about the production of more but about the discovery of better (though often it is both). Economic growth helps us to find new and improved ways of combining resources. The outcomes could be a new medicine, a faster way of travelling, a healthier way of eating or a better way of learning.

The authors first look back at history:

Current measures of international poverty focus on dollar-a-day or two-dollar per-day thresholds. For all but about 0.02% of history, world per capita GDP was just over 50 cents per day, as shown in the graph above. Real economic growth as we now understand it – regular improvements in each person’s quality of life such that we can all readily see how our lives are better than those of our grandparents and great grandparents – is a recent phenomenon. Economic growth of this sort took off only from about 1820.

In the days before economic growth, everyone was below the poverty line!

While Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is hardly a perfect measure of any of the things we care about, the things we do care about are linked to GDP. Higher per capita GDP is associated with better health, wealth, happiness, opportunity, leisure and luxury. Richer societies are also better able to prepare for unforeseen calamities, from new diseases to natural disasters.

GDP is indeed not a measure of happiness, but richer societies can invest more in what does make them happy.

This first-worse-then-better U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental quality is called the Environmental Kuznets Curve. The curve was first described in 1991 by economists Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger, who wanted to test whether free trade between Mexico and the United States was likely to worsen or improve environmental quality in Mexico.46 Trade opponents argued that American industrialists would set up factories in Mexico to take advantage of less restrictive environmental regulations, exporting pollution. Grossman and Krueger argued instead that free trade would increase incomes in Mexico and consequently reduce pollution. Grossman and Krueger found that when per capita GDP reached US$4,000– $5,000 in 1985 dollars, or about US$10,000 today, sulphur dioxide and smoke levels started improving with economic growth rather than worsening. Mexican per capita GDP rose in real terms from about US$4,000 in 1992 to about US$10,000 in 2013. In 2010, a Washington Post headline announced: ‘Mexico City Drastically Reduced Air Pollutants Since 1990s’.47 If anything, Grossman and Krueger were too pessimistic about how long it would take for outcomes to improve.

As countries get wealthier, they can afford to reduce pollution.

In 1972, the Club of Rome predicted that the world would run out of oil by 2003 if oil consumption did not slow down, and by 1992 if consumption continued to grow.

Whoops.

As oil prices rose from the mid-1970s and consumers demanded more fuelefficient cars, substitutes for oil were found and previously uneconomical reserves became worth exploiting. Rising oil prices first encouraged innovation in the Alberta oil sands, then brought us massive amounts of cheap natural gas through hydraulic fracturing. And the rare earths crisis fizzled to nothing as the threat of increased prices both encouraged manufacturers to consider other alternatives and provided incentives for new rare earths mining outside China. If urbanisation ever turned any substantial amount of farmland into subdivisions, the consequent rise in the value of farmland and price of food would both encourage innovation in improving crop yields and in developing denser urban living environments.

The best signal of scarce resources is price. The worst signal is politicians claiming a resource is running out so we must stop using it.

And how to get more economic growth:

All else being equal, a government that makes up 35% of a country’s economic activity rather than 25% is associated with a 0.5 to 1-percentage point reduction in annual economic growth rates.

And over a couple of decades that difference in growth rates has a massive impact on incomes.

And Sweden is relatively open to free trade, which matters as the international literature suggests that a 1-percentage point increase in export growth is associated with a 0.2-percentage point increase in economic growth.

So we should support trade agreements that improve exports.

Income taxes are worse for economic growth than indirect taxes like GST. And while redistributive spending on transfer payments can be harmful for growth, investments in education can improve growth.

So cut income taxes, increase GST and spend more on education where it will do the most good.

News.com.au reports on the spectacular backfiring of Hamas attempting to reach out with a #AskHamas campaign on Twitter.

My favourite response was:

If a tree falls in the woods, and there’s no one to hear it fall, is it still Israel’s fault?

Other good ones are:

• how it chooses human shields
• Given a choice, is it better to hide a weapons cache in a hospital’s radiology or pediatrics unit?
• Why did you murder 30 civilians, including 20 people over the age of 70, at a Passover Seder in Netanya in 2002?
• Are your brave billionaire ‘leaders’ still urging you and your children to martyrdom from the luxury of a 5-star hotel in Qatar?
• When is the Gaza City gay pride parade this year?
• Please provide the exact date of your next rocket campaign vs #Israel. And how many dead civilians before you accept a ceasefire?
• Why did you murder my friends Orit Ozarov and Livnat Dvash and 9 other innocent Israelis at the Moment Cafe on March 9th, 2002?
• When you drag someone into the street to execute them do you prefer paper or cloth bags over their heads?
• Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck, or 100 duck-sized horses?

Over the weekend Five Thirty Eight reported:

Today is Pi Day — the day each year, March 14, that follows the first three digits of pi (3.14). And this year’s Pi Day is a special one: Since — in the U.S. — the date is represented as 3/14/15, we have the first five digits of pi on the calendar.

And at 9:26:53 am it is 3/14/15 9:26:53 which covers the first 10 digits.

That’s news for some people. When it comes to how many digits of pi people know by heart, the majority only know 3.14. Which is fine! Unless you’re building a bridge, that’s the most you will really need to know.

I asked SurveyMonkey Audience to put out a poll to see how far people could get reciting the infinite digits of pi. Of 941 respondents, 836 attempted to name the digits after the decimal point. This is how far they got:

10% could cite 3.1415926 and 5% 3.141592653

NASA employees can probably get away with knowing only the first six digits after the decimal point. Also, we have calculators for when we need a few more digits, TI-89s for when those calculators are insufficient and Wolfram Alpha for when we reduce those calculators to a smoking, melted mess.

My party trick at school and university was being able to recite pi to 15 decimal places. I thought this would impress the girls. I was wrong 🙂

Hillary and her emails was like last week the favourite topic with the cartoonists. Instead I’ve chosen two cartoons on different topics.

The first cartoon by John Deering makes fun of Obama’s Middle East policy in particular the relationship with Saudi Arabia.

© John Deering (Andy Marlette News Journal) – Found at Real Clear Politics

The second by Gary Varvel pokes fun at Washington DC and Republicans by showing the elephants.

© Gary Varvel – Found at Real Clear Politics

This clip has gone global, making Kiwis cringe the world over. But the judges are not both Kiwis.

Natalia Kills (whom I had never heard of before this) is from Bradford, while Willy Moon is sadly a Wellingtonian.

Maybe they were trying to be Simon Cowell, but they failed miserably. They just made themselves look fragile and precious.

According to the Herald Moon has previous form:

Worse was to follow in the bakery, Moon calling her a “c***” in front of stunned staff and customers. “This is a man who is supposed to mentor young people on national television and what he said was disgraceful,” Ms Neal-Gailer said.

“I couldn’t believe it when he twice hissed at me, ‘You are such a c***’.”

Today Moon took to Twitter to abuse Ms Neal-Gailer and the Herald.

“Not only a **** but a lying **** judging from that ‘statement’ you [nzherald.co.nz] saw fit to print. Laughable. Bored?,” he posted.

He added: “‘Woman proves my point by writing long inaccurate sad letter detailing how much of a **** she is'”. Better headline.”

His wife also came out swinging: “Why did you invent a quote my husband NEVER said?! He never apologized to that c*** lady. Stop defending her bullying,” Kills wrote.

She added: “Hilarious that lady is proving not only how much of a c*** she is, but also a lying c***! ‘Children present’?! Where?!”

They seem like genuinely terrible people, so why has TV3 decided to put them on X-Factor?

Even worse why has NZ on Air put $800,000 of our money into subsidising this horrible show?

UPDATE: Mediaworks has announced the two judges have been sacked. That is a good decision. One can make critical comments of a performance, without just denigrating the person’s worth as a human being. The two judges seemed unable to tell the difference.

The Dom Post editorial:

The super-city proposal has drawn all kinds of of flak for how it might suck the “local” out of local democracy. But sometimes parochialism makes for its own dubious decision-making, as our councils proved this week.

First was the news that Hutt City Council is progressing plans for a $6 million bowling centre in Naenae.

That, one councillor calculated, means $13,000 of investment for each local bowling club member. If it’s true, that’s simply ridiculous. It gets worse, because bowling numbers are in decline – the number of clubs nationally has more than halved since the late 1990s.

Meanwhile Naenae itself is home to an unusually high proportion of young people, which makes it an even more incongruous project: expensive new digs for a sport favoured by older people..

And the costs of the centre are rising, at least for the council – it has been asked to double its contribution to $4m, while its subsidiary Community Facilities Trust will raise the rest.

Any Councillor who votes for this should be sacked. They want to take $60 off every resident and build a bowling centre which would be used by a few hundred people.

They are both an interesting read. The SIS report is here. Some extracts:

Our work in 2013/14 had a significant operational focus on individuals with links to groups in both Iraq and Syria such as the Islamic State/Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This work has involved investigations into individuals already embedded with terrorist organisations overseas, New Zealand citizens or permanent residents based both in New Zealand and offshore with intentions to travel overseas to engage in politically motivated violence, and individuals who are facilitating others to travel and those engaged in funding terrorist organisations.

By preventing these individuals travelling to engage in violent extremism, the NZSIS assesses that there is a real likelihood that the lives of these individuals may have been saved. In addition, had they managed to get to Syria and fight, the NZSIS has prevented the risk of battle-hardened individuals returning and compromising New Zealand’s security.

I wouldn’t mind them going so much if we could stop them returning. But generally we can’t.

Women comprise 40.5% of the NZSIS. The NZSIS achieved a significant milestone in 2013/14 with the appointment of its first female Director, Rebecca Kitteridge, and four of the nine roles that make up the NZSIS Senior Leadership Team are currently held by women.

I suspect that is very different to the past.

The NZSIS operates within an oversight and accountability framework that includes the Executive, Parliament, and independent authorities such as the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, the Commissioner of Security Warrants, and the Offices of the Privacy Commissioner and Ombudsman. This multi-layered approach to oversight provides an assurance that the NZSIS’s work is transparent at a number of levels.

The institutional checks are very important.

Fifty-one (51) domestic intelligence warrants were in force. Of those, thirty-four (34) were issued during the reporting period, and seventeen (17) were issued during the previous year but remained in force for some part of the reporting period.

The average length for which those warrants were in force during the reporting period was 134 days.

So a warrant is issued around every 10 days.

The GCSB report is here.

A total of 19 interception warrants were in force during the 2013/14 year. A total of 14 interception warrants were issued during the 2013/14 year.

A total of 59 access authorisations were in force during the 2013/14 year. A total of 48 access authorisations were issued during the 2013/14 year.

So the total number of warrants issued last year for the SIS and GCSB combined were 96. It is not a huge number.

Ubud, Bali

Just sorting through some of the images I took on last years Bali trip and thought I would share this one as something a little bit different from my normal landscapes.

This was taken within the Monkey Forest in Ubud, where there are some fantastic statues in the Hindu Temple complex.

I loved Ubud and am looking forward to getting back there soon. Have a great week.

Cheers

Richard [richardhume.com]

YouTube: Timeless – A Panoramic Journey

Stuff reports:

The new season of Game of Thrones will screen in this country at exactly the same time as it does in the United States and in many other countries around the world.

That means the first episode of season five will be on Sky TV channel SoHo at 1pm on Monday, April 13, Sky head of publicity Lisa Franklin said in a statement. 

I will be busy every Monday afternoon from 1 pm to 2 pm.

As well as the early-afternoon screenings, SoHo will repeat each episode in New Zealand at 8.30pm the same day.

Great move by Sky to show it simultaneously. People don’t want to wait half a day during which they read reviews.

Game of Thrones maker HBO said simultaneous screenings would take place in 170 countries and territories.

Good on HBO for also making the access rights available.

Stuff reports:

The race to bring the first robot car to market intensified with Baidu’s announcement. Google showed off a prototype self-driving car in December. Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen AG’s Audi unit are testing them, too. Others, such as Toyota, Honda and General Motors, are developing technologies to assist, if not replace, human drivers. Tesla Motors Inc.’s Model S has an “autopilot” mode. Apple revealed last month that it’s also working on an electric car, although it’s unclear what automated features it might have.

What’s also unclear are the regulatory hurdles the invention might have to overcome. Five US states have passed laws allowing them, with certain conditions, and six more are considering them, according to researchers at Stanford Law School.

I think driverless cars are the future for public transport. A train and a bus can only take you between two fixed points. A driverless shuttle can pick you up and drop you off door to door.

Once driverless cars become widely available as a form of public transport, people might well abandon their own vehicles. It’s inefficient to have capital locked up in a car which gets used for only an hour or so a day, if that.

Should we start planning for the future, such as dedicated lanes for driverless cars as well as buses?

The annual report of the Abortion Supervisory Committee is here.

Good to see the rate in New Zealand declining since 2007 – the only of the countries featured to be doing so significantly.

If one looks at the changes by age, the big fall has been 15 to 24 year olds. The number of abortions of 15 to 19 year olds has fallen from 4,097 in 2008 2,096 in 2013. A huge 50% decline.

For 20 to 24 year olds it has fallen from 5,396 to 4,386.

94% of abortions occur in the first trimester.  Les than 0.5% after 20 weeks.

0.3% of abortions are done due to danger to life, 0.7% due to danger to physical health, 1.4% due to a handicapped child and the rest 97.6% due to danger to mental health.

55% of those who had abortions were not using contraception, 25% were using condoms, 11% oral contraceptives.  A good reminder that many contraceptives are not infallible.

The Herald reports:

A researcher is calling for curbs on taxpayer funding of music videos that contain violence after his group found “high levels” of violence in the music videos shown on TV.

I don’t think the Government should choose which music videos are worthy of funding, or not funding.

Instead I don’t think taxpayers should fund any music videos at all.

The Taxpayers Union has fired up its policy costing machine again and is costing what the promises made by parties during the by-election will cost NZ households. It’s already off to an expensive start.

A lot of interesting data in UMR’s annual mood of the nation. It includes:

• Average country right direction in 2014 was 62% to 28% wrong direction
• The most followed political news story (after the election result) was the Shane Jones Countdown allegations. The MP that bailed on Labour as he no longer fitted got their most impacting story
• Gap between National and Labour went from 10% in 2013 to 18% in 2014
• The least trusted institution is trade unions at 23%, below organised religion at 27%
• 62% of NZers now own a smartphone
• 76% are on Facebook, 30% on Linked In and 22% on Google Plus and Twitter
• Net approval ratings of world leaders is Obama +70%, Merkel +37%, Cameron +30%, Abbott +7%, Putin -64%
• The level of interest in various sports is rugby 71%, netball 51%, league 47% and cricket 45%
• Only 23% of NZers could correctly name Jim Bolger as the PM in 1994. More people thought it was Clark or Shipley.

Simon Breheny at the Daily Telegraph writes:

And the best part about this health solution? It doesn’t involve government.

Demands for governments to identify and solve problems are a recipe for disaster. They lead to higher taxes and less freedom. A cure administered by the nanny state is worse than the disease.

Often it is.

There are a range of cigarette substitutes already on the market. Electronic cigarettes are the most prominent, and they’re currently taking the world by storm.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered nicotine vaporisers. They do not contain tobacco or produce smoke. E-cigarette users inhale vapour, which produces a similar effect to smoking without the health risks caused by the carcinogenic and toxins of combustible tobacco products.

The global e-cigarette market is worth around $2 billion. This is predicted to grow to $10 billion by 2020. Part of the success of this new product is that it is used as a device to help traditional cigarette smokers to quit tobacco.

An article published in August 2014 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Public Health concluded that “the use of [e-cigarettes] can reduce the number of cigarettes smoked and withdrawal symptoms …”

In an article for BMC Medicine last year, Peter Hajek of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine said: “although there is no doubt that smokers switching to electronic cigarettes substantially reduce the risk to their health, some tobacco control activists and health organisations discourage smokers from using [e-cigarettes] and lobby policy makers to reduce [e-cigarette] use by draconian regulation.”

In NZ they are banned from being sold! You can sell tobacco but not e-cigarettes.

Amy Adams announced:

Fibre growth connections in New Zealand have tripled in the last year, putting us first of all 34 countries in the OECD, says Communications Minister Amy Adams.

The latest OECD Broadband Portal penetration statistics show New Zealand is now number one among developed countries for annual growth of fibre connections from June 2013 to June 2014, with an annual growth of 272 per cent.

The average annual growth of fibre connections in the OECD was 12.4 per cent.

“In the year to December 2014, fibre connections in New Zealand grew from 19,000 to 69,301. This is an impressive jump and demonstrates the impact that the Government’s $2 billion investment in the Ultra-fast Broadband and Rural Broadband Initiative programme is having on the telecommunications services available to New Zealanders,” says Ms Adams.

We are coming off a low base, but that’s excellent growth.

“Over the past ten years, we have moved up from 22^nd place out of 30 OECD countries in June 2004 to being 15^th out of 34 OECD countries for fixed broadband subscriptions as at June 2014,” says Ms Adams.

“We are now ahead of Australia, the US and Japan for fixed broadband, with more than 31 broadband subscriptions for every 100 New Zealanders signed up for this service.

Good to now be in the top half. The reforms of both this Government and the previous one have helped.

Danyl at Dim-Post blogged:

The justification for the expansion of the GCSB’s powers back in 2013 to give them the power to spy on New Zealanders was that there are ‘bad guys’ in our country. Terrorists. Radicals. Evil-doers who would harm innocent civilians or attack the economic infrastructure of the country to further their own deranged agenda.

What the GCSB is actually doing, we’ve learned from the Snowden leaks, is spying on New Zealanders – and everyone else – in Tuvalu, and Kiribati, and the Cook Islands, and the Antarctic research bases. And at the same time the police appear powerless to apprehend an individual or group threatening to murder babies and cripple the New Zealand economy by poisoning infant milk powder.

It is almost beyond doubt that the person or persons responsible is a New Zealander. This means that the GCSB can’t intercept their communications – both under the new and the old law.

So Danyl holding them up as a failure of the GCSB is bizarre. It is like blaming the Ministry of Education for the fruit fly problem.

The recent law change merely explicitly gave the GCSB the ability to provide technical support to other agencies such as the Police and SIS – if there is a warrant.

As no one knows who the person responsible is, then there can be no warrant to intercept their communications, so it is no surprise that the Police have not been able to locate them.

If in fact the GCSB did have the awesome powers and abilities that hysterical people claim they have, then it is possible the person responsible would have been located. So I can only assume this is what Danyl is demanding – greater powers for the GCSB.

A release of interest for some:

A new protest group of Aucklanders has joined the outcry against Ports of Auckland’s planned extensions to Bledisloe Wharf.

Under the call to action of Stop Stealing Our Harbour, the group is calling for a halt to any further work on the port expansion until Auckland Council honours its promise to fully scrutinise the Ports’ plans.

The group says the port company is incrementally expanding in to the harbour – and its actions are being sanctioned by Ports owner Auckland Council.

Stop Stealing Our Harbour spokesperson Michael Goldwater says Ports of Auckland starts work in April on extending Bledisloe Wharf by nearly 100m in to the Waitemata Harbour.

“Aucklanders have recently paid $40 million to Ports of Auckland to create the harbour gateway to our city on Queens Wharf. The Bledisloe Wharf extensions will completely block the view from Queens Wharf to the outer harbour, one of the most significant views on our waterfront.   

“The extensions will also unnecessarily narrow an increasingly congested harbour. The Waitemata Harbour is Auckland’s greatest asset, one we hold in trust for future generations. Through the actions of the Ports of Auckland and Auckland Council it is now under further threat,” Mr Goldwater says.

The group says resource consents for the extension were issued in late December 2014 without any consultation, notification or knowledge of the wider Auckland community and other stakeholders. …

Aucklanders are being urged to join the campaign on www.facebook.com/stopstealingourharbour for further developments. …

The advocacy group comprises representatives of boating, political, business, and professional organisations as well as lawyers and architects.

I’m against the Port expanding from their current space.

A guest post by Hugh Pavletich:

INDEPENDENT PANEL SLAMS CHRISTCHURCH COUNCIL PLANNERS

 Hugh Pavletich
Performance Urban Planning
Christchurch
New Zealand

 4 March 2015

 Introduction …

 On Thursday 26 February, an important decision was announced by the Christchurch Replacement District Plan Independent Hearings Panel, dealing with the Christchurch City Councils Notified Plan foundation Strategic Directions and Outcomes ( http://www.chchplan.ihp.govt.nz/Hearings/Hearing1/Pages/default.aspx ).

 Recently, the Press Senior Feature Writer John McCrone interviewed Sir John Hansen, a former High Court Judge and current Chair of the Christchurch Hearing Panel … Sir John Hansen is a man with a plan . Sir John and the Panel are highly regarded within the wider community.

 Housing …

 With respect to housing (s164 onwards) the Panel states the Council’s Notified Plan was “insufficiently clear and directive on the very important subject of housing capacity and choice”.

As noted within the decision, submitters explained the human costs of Christchurch’s stressed and currently severely unaffordable housing market.

S167 states …

‘In the overall sense, that demonstrated relevant provisions of the Notified Version would fail to promote sustainable management. In particular, its Policy 3.6.1.2. referred vaguely and inconsistently to notions of “housing affordability” and “opportunities for affordable housing development … sufficient to meet demand’. Without proper definition or objective or goal” the Notified Version did not provide any helpful measure of the problem or ability to monitor whether the problem was being resolved (through the administration of related Plan provisions, for example).”

The Panel Decision stressed the importance of consistency, clarity and certainty.

In subsequent sections the Decision states the Planning Experts Joint Version “… was much clearer”.

The Planning Experts perspective, however, tends to be prescriptive.

Continue reading »

Claire Trevett writes:

For Labour the nod is a short-term gain, an attempt at a humiliating poke in the eye for National and a result that would make it harder to get a majority on legislation such as Resource Management Act reforms. But short-term sugar rushes are always followed by a crash.

Enter 2017 and the next election. The reason Peters is a reluctant beneficiary of Labour’s endorsement is because he knows Northland is inherently a conservative electorate. It is partly because Peters is also inherently conservative that he has a chance.

If he does succeed in putting the “win” into Winston, Labour could be handing National a future coalition partner.

An electorate seat would be a powerful security blanket for Peters. So far he has refused to say if he will stand again in 2017 – when he will be 72. It’s a safe bet he will if he wins the by-election, if only to try to cement his hold on the seat. If he chooses well, he might even get Northland to accept an NZ First successor (hello, Shane Jones?). He will not want to do anything that might imperil his party’s hold on the seat and return it to the precipice of the 5 per cent threshold.

Peters has felt the wrath of conservative voters scorned in Tauranga and knows it is National they flock to – and in bulk. Winning a seat in a by-election is one thing. Keeping it is quite another. If Peters wants to hold the seat come 2017, cuddling up to Labour is risky territory. So, if Peters holds the balance of power in 2017, Labour could well find its gift to NZ First was a gift to National in disguise.

Labour’s effective endorsement of Peters, if it works, may turn out to be one of their bigger strategic blunders.

The quarterly report for Year 2 of the Auckland Housing Accord seems to show that it is working in terms of increasing supply. Key points:

• With adjustments for ‘double counting’ the net number of new sections created and dwellings consented was 3,291, just over 25% of the Year 2 target of 13,000
• 2,188 new dwellings consented, up by over 220 from 1,959 in the same quarter of the previous year.
• 768 new apartments consented in the quarter up from 704 in the same quarter of the previous year

In Year 1 there were 11,060 new dwellings consented, above the target of 9,000. This was the highest level since 2006.

So good to see progress being made on the supply side. It is easier to change supply than it is to change demand.